


hollow vs. the mere concept of gentleness

by SkyeDragonDraws



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, In a sense, Sickfic, also ish? Hollow is sick but it’s not really a proper sickfic if you catch my drift, baby is comforted but does not realize they are in fact being comforted, they’re just. so confused
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:35:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23881639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyeDragonDraws/pseuds/SkyeDragonDraws
Summary: Hollow and the unfamiliar experience of gentleness.
Relationships: The Hollow Knight | Pure Vessel & Hornet
Comments: 18
Kudos: 161





	hollow vs. the mere concept of gentleness

**Author's Note:**

> Just to be clear! It/its pronouns are used for thk in this fic to reflect their deeply dehumanized they have been their entire life, and just how much they’ve internalized that. I use they/them pronouns for vessels when I’m not being terribly mean to them :D

It is awoken by the shifting of its blanket nest.

Wearily, it blinks open its eyes. The cotton-stuffed feeling behind its mask has only gotten worse since it last slept, and it feels like its throat is coated in sand.

Its wounds itch and burn almost more than its eyes do.

Pressure, liquid and close enough to Infection to give rise to uncomfortable primal stirrings in its gut, builds in its chest.

On its next wheezing exhale, it convulses sharply, sending stabbing pains throughout its body.

The pressure in both its mask and chest releases. A temporary relief, certainly one it will suffer for later, but it has learned to treasure these spare moments of less pain.

“Hollow? Are you awake?”

Ah. Hornet. She is here. The shifting of the nest must have been her settling beside it.

Her claws brush its carapace as she peels back the blankets it is cocooned in. The cold air makes it shiver, and she lets out a meaningless croon as she draws its arm out of the pocket of warmth that appeared while it slept.

She picks carefully at the bandages encasing its burned chitin, unwrapping them with the delicacy and precision borne only through years of repeated motion.

It offers no resistance as its sister manipulates its arm. She is firm and unyielding - if it were to attempt to resist her (an almost unfathomable thing), it would no doubt lose - yet _shockingly_ gentle.   
  


She scares it. A horrible thing, that, the acknowledgement and categorization of emotion it should not have.

Acknowledgement implies enough familiarity with emotion to know a difference between feeling and not, and categorization means both enough experience with emotion to recognize a pattern, and enough thought to group similar feelings together.

Hollow beings _do not do that._

It should be able to scour itself clean of impurities such as these, but it does not, _cannot_.

The foreignness of gentle handling combined with the familiar firm (if silent) orders leaves it on edge, uncertain.

Fearful and shaky, waiting for some new task, some new purpose, some new punishment for the crime of existing as it does.

The uncertain fear almost reminds it of how it felt when She spoke to it at first. Her light burned its mind much the same as its father’s, and She offered it no more mercy than he, but the overwhelming attention, directed at _it_? An unfamiliar experience.

An unfamiliar and _painful_ experience, so painful, pain spearing right through its voided soul time and time again until it was made into the damaged, ragged and moth-eaten thing it is now.

Hornet’s claws scrape oddly against its fragile carapace, and it realizes that it is shaking again.

A hand on its mask, cool against the new heat that has invaded its body and mind.

“Your fever has gotten worse,” she says. It can hear the negative emotion in the tightness of her voice before she removes her hand.

Despite her in obvious displeasure with it and its broken, useless state, she still carries that same uncompromising gentleness as she carefully coats the scorched carapace of its arm in a blissfully soothing ointment before rewrapping it.

Hornet finishes and lets go of its arm, allowing it to tuck shaking limb back into the blankets.

“I know you’re cold, but I need to change your other bandages, okay?”

Her hand is on its mask again. This time, she presses lightly, and it cannot help but push back. The overstuffed feeling fades somewhat, and it _barely_ bites back a wheezing whine as she withdraws her hand once more.

Some of its unforgivable desire must have shown, for its sister speaks again. “I know, I know, I’m sorry. It’s no fun.”

It feels gentle tap on one of its horns. Mask against mask, a kind of comfort it had forgotten existed in the world.

Still, it shivers as the blankets are drawn back, exposing its brokenness for all the world to see.

“I’m going to do this like usual - working shoulders down, okay?”

Her hands slide under it, and she rolls it over onto its back and leverages it into a half-sit. She leans it against the wall, where it is supported and cushioned by pillows.

A familiar position, although the new ache in its shell that has been building up with the cotton and sandpaper feeling makes it an unusually painful one.

It does its best to be still, but it only just manages. The moment its sister finishes tying off the last knot of the fresh wrappings, it slumps forward with a pained whistle.

“Oh - _sibling_ , you didn’t tell me that was bad, come here, let me help you lie down.”

Once more, its sister is firm but gentle with it.

She braces it against her body, resting its mask against her back and slowly easing it down. She is strong, but so much smaller than it, so she must use every trick to prevent it from simply collapsing to the floor.

(She could simply drop it, be done and leave it to its pitiful shivering, move along without bothering to adjust it, but she does not. This confuses it greatly.)

As painful as being still was, movement is worse.

It is gasping and shaking and unable to be as silent as it should by the time it is curled in its resting position once more.

Its head slides off Hornet’s shoulder to rest in her lap. She lays one hand on the side of its mask, leaning forward and adjusting the blankets with the other.

She finishes, and there is quiet for a moment.

“Please,” Hornet says suddenly, breaking the soft silence with her sharp voice. “Let me know when I’m hurting you.”

It does not understand.

As always, its sister does not _make_ it understand.

She leaves it to its confusion, padding the silence with the sound of her claws gently rasping against the porcelain of its mask.

She is gentle with it, and _kind_ , and it just. It...

It is _so confused._

Its head aches, and it is so _tired._ The cotton feeling pushes against its mind, dulling the forbidden thoughts hidden there.

It is not its place to understand, anyway.

Not its place to understand this softer burning, a punishment that Hornet does not seem to want it to face in full. A heat that is soothed, that does not wholly consume it.

Not its place to understand the kindness she offers it. The soft place to sleep, the gentleness that its wounds are tended with.

Nor is it its place to understand what she means when she says she does not wish to hurt it.

As if that mattered. Pain was a consequence of its existence, one she could not prevent.

Why waste energy on a worthless endeavor?

**Author's Note:**

> “I’ll write a sickfic” Skye says. Skye proceeds to not write a sickfic, but instead a character study in which the character is sick. My sinful hands cannot be stopped.


End file.
